Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2022 i UNCUT

He’s your man! On sale now is the 148-page Deluxe Edition of our Ultimate Music Guide to Leonard Cohen. We revisit all his albums with the people who worked on them, there’s an expanded take on our ‘on the road’ feature from 2008, plus a deep dive into Cohen’s turbulent early 1970s. You want it darker? Dim the lights for a sneak preview of the forthcoming documentary and a new review of Len on film… Also still in shops or available from Uncut.co.uk/single is our Curated By… Pavement special edition. Essential reading for summer babes and range lifers everywhere! Talking of Leonard Cohen, Blue Note are poised to issue an album of jazzy Cohen covers, sung by the likes of James Taylor, Norah Jones, Peter Gabriel, Mavis Staples and Iggy…

DRUG DEALER Hiding In Plain Sight MEXICAN SUMMER Encouraged to sing higher by Annette Peacock, LA’s Michael Collins ascends to soft-rock heaven in the slipstream of Phil Lynott, Ned Doheny and Boz Scaggs. JOHN CALE “Night Crawling” DOMINO The Bowie collab that never was. Cale draws on his mid-’70s misadventures with the Thin White Duke for this coolly ambivalent ode to New York nightlife. AOIFE NESSA FRANCES Protector PARTISAN Rich, mellifluent follow-up to her dreamy debut Land Of No Junction, inspired by morning swims at County Kerry’s spectacular Inch Beach. JULIANNA RIOLINO All Blue YOU’VE CHANGED Toronto-based stained glass restorer and member of Daniel Romano’s Outfit (see p28) channels Judee, Dolly and Emmylou on a lustrous, emotional country-rock set. SUN RA ARKESTRA Living Sky OMNI SOUND Led by the astonishing…

P24 MAKAYA McCRAVEN P26 TIM BURGESS P27 BETH ORTON P30 PIXIES P31 JESCA HOOP P32 DR JOHN P34 SUEDE P37 AL-QASAR THE AFGHAN WHIGS How Do You Burn? ROYAL CREAM/BMG 8/10 Alt.rock vets’ impassioned ninth In the last 20 years, Greg Dulli has steered two fine side projects and recorded his solo debut, but now he’s pulled the Whigs back into (sharp) focus. Their first in five years taps classic rock and pop, going in hard with a QOTSA-like guitar vamp to open the barrelling “I’ll Make You See God”. There’s a ton of variety here, though: “The Getaway” borrows from the psychedelic Beatles, while “Take Me There” is driven by a bluesy, chain-gang rhythm and “Concealer” hits a tender spot via acoustic guitar and Dulli’s echoing croon. Closer “In Flames”…

La Luna YOU’VE CHANGED 8/10 AMERICANA Album of the month Mystical prog-country opera from Canadian polymath IT’S almost impossible to keep track of Daniel Romano. When he’s not publishing collections of poetry or art, the Ontario musician is either recording solo, producing others (most recently Carson McHone’s Still Life) or creating ambient epics under the guise of varianza. To call him prolific feels reductive. In 2020 alone, grounded by the pandemic, he released no fewer than eight albums, either solo or fronting Daniel Romano’s Outfit, including an entire reimagining of Bob Dylan’s In fi d e l s. La Luna might be his most ambitious project to date. A celestial song cycle in 14 chapters, served in two lengthy parts, it’s a modern psychedelic musical that seeks to address the…

Things Happen That Way ROUNDER 7/10 Storied veteran tips his hat to country music on understated yet spirited farewell. By Sharon O’Connell GIVEN the range of Mac Rebennack’s decades-long journeying and his talent for transmuting roots and folk music into a rock’n’roll style so distinctive it’s almost its own genre, it’s odd that he never made a country album. After all, country music was one of his first loves: along with the blues and jazz records in his father’s collection, he grew up listening to Hank Williams and Roy Rogers, and came to admire its strong narrative tradition. With Things Happen That Way, which he saw through to completion before his death in 2019, Rebennack is both paying respect and indulging his affection. It was recorded in 2017, first at…

1990s Nude Restaurant LAST NIGHT FROM GLASGOW 7/10 Glaswegian trio’s lost third album rediscovered For a while in the mid-2000s the glammy rock of Jackie McKeown’s Glasgow group threatened to follow Franz Ferdinand’s path to mainstream success. They imploded after two Rough Trade albums, leaving McKeown to collaborate with producer Bernard Butler in the more experimental Trans. A third 1990s album was recorded in Glasgow’s Green Door studio around 2011, and promptly forgotten about. Revived and remixed by Paul McGeechan, it embraces rock tropes with self-mocking charm. “Fassbinder Would Have Loved Techno” wraps a Jonathan Richman-style conceit in a crunchy Franz-style riff, and “Fun Size” adds an inch to Iggy Pop’s “Five Foot Two” and turns it into a chat-up song (“small fry, it’s all right”). Sometimes the playfulness threatens…

ALHAJI WAZIRI OSHOMAH World Spirituality Classics 3: The Muslim Highlife Of Alhaji Waziri Oshomah LUAKA BOP 8/10 Joyously pantheistic ’80s afrobeat from Nigerian crusader IMAGINE a place where Muslims and Christians live in peace and harmony, and the dancefloor is a sacred place where those of all faiths, or none, can get down together. Afenmailand in southern Nigeria’s Edo state is not paradise, for the ubiquitous problems of poverty and disease persist; but in the 1970s and 1980s when Alhaji Waziri Oshomah recorded the tracks compiled here, the region seemed to exist in a heterogeneous harmony that was a world away from the hostilities and divisions that trouble so much of our planet. Following Alice Coltrane’s Turiyasangitananda and the gospel soul compilation The Time For Peace Is Now, this is…

Steve Christensen NOBODY knows Khruangbin better than Steve Christensen, who’s engineered and N co-produced all of their records going back to their 2015 debut, The Universe Smiles Upon You. He plays down his role in the creative process, stressing that the band always have a strong idea of what they want. “I’m not helping them write or arrange the songs or anything like that,” he says. “They’re pretty musically self-sufficient. My input a lot of times is just helping them focus and keeping them emotionally on track.” For a band who rely so much on creating a vibe, these kind of people-management skills are crucial – especially given their contrasting temperaments. “They have an interesting creative tension between them,” adds Christensen. “Mark is one of the most musically particular people I’ve…

DURING Ken Caillat’s recent meeting with Mitchell, the master storyteller revealed she’s been working on her Hollywood ending. “I met Joni the other day and I still was pretty awestruck,” says Caillat. “She is 78, she walks with a cane, but she has a great mind and she still tells so many stories. She told us that she’d bought a funeral plot in the cemetery. She said it was very expensive but very gorgeous, under a tree, with a grassy knoll. She said it cost so much money that she asked the people [at the cemetery] if they’d mind if she had a picnic there on occasion. So, she took some of her good friends and they picnicked on her future grave site. That’s pretty clever, right? Before you spend…

HER WAY OPENS AUGUST 26 Laure Calamy – nervy Noémie in TV’s Call My Agent! – stars as a single mother and sex worker in a politically charged debut from director Cécile Ducrocq. DRY GROUND BURNING OPENS SEPTEMBER 2 Brazilian drama takes a swipe at the Bolsonaro regime, with the story of a female favela gang hijacking an oil pipeline. THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING OPENS SEPTEMBER 2 Idris Elba plays a djinn to Tilda Swinton’s academic in a wry modern fairytale from Babe/Mad Max maestro George Miller. THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE OPENS SEPTEMBER 9 Rerelease for the 1972 classic by Surrealist pioneer Luis Buñuel, in which a well-heeled group of friends repeatedly fail to have dinner, for the strangest of reasons. THE SCORE OPENS SEPTEMBER 9 Johnny…

“WE always try to give people something they don’t expect,” says EOTR co-founder and curator Simon Taffe. As well as the festival’s usual smattering of secret shows and pop-up performances, the Disco Ship has been transformed into The Boat – a new live stage dedicated to out-there sounds that Taffe describes as “Cafe Oto in the forest”, hosting the likes of James Holden, Snapped Ankles and Duncan Marquiss. THE MAGNETIC FIELDS I think Stephin [Merritt] is one of the greatest living songwriters. The way he uses words is so spot on, funny and wry. It’s very underplayed but still showy as well. I’ve been trying to get him to play since our first year in 2006. I don’t think he’s much of a festival person, but we convinced him with…

1 GA-20 By My Lonesome We begin with some lowdown, dirty rock’n’roll courtesy of this bass-less blues-rock trio. Taken from their new album Crackdown, it’s raw and lo-fi, as thrilling and lopsided as early rock’n’roll may have sounded in its heyday. 2 SUEDE 15 Again A little glossier, here’s a highlight from Autofiction, Brett Anderson and co’s “nasty, brutish and short” new record. They tell us all about the album in our six-page feature on page 82. 3 JAKE BLOUNT Once There Was No Sun The New Faith finds American folk musician Blount using traditional songs, field recordings and hip-hop to tell an Afrofuturist tale of postapocalyptic rejuvenation. This unique record is our Album Of The Month on page 18. 4 JOHANNA WARREN Piscean Lover Transplanted to rural Wales during…

This album feels deeper and more ambitious than Spider Tales. Do you see it as a continuation? I think so. There are moments on Spider Tales that anticipate The New Faith. I definitely agree that this new album is more complex, more personal, and has a different kind of depth to it. In some ways, it’s taking the ideas behind Spider Tales, which were to explore these old traditions from within the community and the way that they progress through the generations, and throwing that hundreds of years into the future. It’s like, ‘What would future people be singing if they went back and dug through centuries-old songs and interpreted them with the sounds and technology available?’ What made Afrofuturism the ideal way to present this idea? Afrofuturism has become…

In These Times INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM/NONESUCH 9/10 The Chicago drummer/producer/arranger mines the past to speak to the present. By Stephen Deusner MAKAYA McCRAVEN’s seventh album under his own name, In These Times, opens with the sound of applause and a swarm of strings that quickly coalesce into a galloping rhythm, and then something unexpected happens: a human voice asserts, somewhat mysteriously, “I never want to be known as anybody opposed to progress… It just kinda seems to me that nobody has the right to take away our responsibility to finish what these people have died for”. It’s a clip of Harry Belafonte speaking with broadcaster Studs Terkel for his Chicago Public Radio show, and the statement neatly encapsulates McCraven’s mission as a drummer, producer and arranger. He draws from the music…

Doggerel PIXIES RECORDING INC/BMG 7/10 Album eight takes it a little easier. By Emily Mackay IT’S a good thing a legacy as towering as the Pixies’ is so hard to topple, because they did have a good go for a while there. Endless and increasingly joyless touring after their 2004 reunion lowered the value of their legend, while bassist Kim Deal refused to make a new record because, she said, as a music fan, she wouldn’t want to listen to a new Pixies album. After her departure, the release of Indie Cindy and Head Carrier – mediocre and unconvincing if not actively terrible records, sometimes flippantly trying to shrug off the burden of the past, sometimes audibly crushed beneath it – did little to disprove her point (plus for many…

Derv Gordon, The Equals How unusual was it to have black and white musicians in the same group at that time? It was very rare. After us came The Foundations, and obviously Sly & The Family Stone, who were both multiracial bands. But it was rare. For us, it seemed quite natural. I came to the UK as a seven-year-old from Jamaica. We’d grown up in Islington, which was then a predominantly white area. Most of my friends were white, or Indian, or Cypriot. We were given our name by friends of the drummer, John Hall. They said, three of you are black, two of you are white, but you’re all equal. So you should be called The Equals. Was there pressure on black British artists in the 1960s to…

Blemish/Manafon (reissues, 2003, 2009) SAMADHISOUND/UMC 9/10, 9/10 Glitch-improv confessionals revealed as deconstructed pop standards on new vinyl reissues. By Stephen Troussé INTERVIEWED in 2009, David Sylvian mused upon the supposed difficulty of Manafon, his last vocal studio album to date. “I don’t personally hear it as being a difficult album, but I’ve always known the experience would be different for others. Time will soften its edges. It may sow the seeds for what might develop into a new genre for vocal music perhaps? Or maybe it’s simply a passing glitch on the digital face of popular music. I don’t know. But what I am sure of is that, over time, its abstractions will become much easier to embrace.” The reissue of Manafon, along with its older sibling, 2003’s Blemish, on…

RECENTLY, Kenney Jones has recently been digging through his personal archive. He has been searching for Small Faces songs he stored away as a young man, just hours after they were recorded, but which have since languished in obscurity. “Every time we recorded something, I always asked for a reel-to-reel copy to take home,” the sole surviving Small Face explains. “So I’ve got backing tracks, rough mixes and unmixed tracks, among other things.” Some of these, he acknowledges, will finally see the light of day on an expanded boxset of their compilation album, The Autumn Stone. Originally released in 1969, The Autumn Stone capped the Small Faces’ brief but magnificent recording career. Although together for less than four years, the Small Faces’ mastered R&B, psychedelia, Essex folk-rock reveries and blissed-out…

A PART OF AMERICA THEREIN (COTTAGE/ROUGH TRADE, 1982) The USA experiences parts of Hex in June-July 1981 LIE DREAM OF A CASINO SOUL (KAMERA SINGLE, 1981) MES takes aim at the northern soul scene. On the flip, The Fall’s two-drummer lineup is captured in the studio for the first time. HEX ENDUCTION HOUR (KAMERA, 1982) “Regal Cinema Hitchin ¾, Hljorite, Reykjavik, Iceland ¼”. The sleeve tells the bare bones of the story of The Fall’s – literal – finest hour. LOOK, KNOW (KAMERA SINGLE, 1982) Recorded in the Hitchin Fusion Hours, this intermittently features a Marc Riley lead vocal. ROOM TO LIVE (KAMERA, 1982) Featuring guest artists Arthur Kadmon (guitar) and Adrian Niman (sax). MES fucks with the formula with sporadically brilliant results. FALL IN A HOLE (FLYING NUN, 1983) The imperial Fall play…

FROM singing in a church choir, to backing Stevie Wonder and then on to her own career, Deniece Williams certainly travelled a long way in just a few short years. Not bad, especially for someone who had no drive to be a millionselling artist solo artist. “I wasn’t ambitious at all,” she explains today, “I really didn’t want to be a singer. I didn’t want to tour because, by that time, I already had two children. But I did want to be a songwriter, that was what I was going for. I wanted to go into the studios and be a jingle singer! But instead I got a recording contract.” That deal was all down to “Free”, a track co-written by Williams and three other members of Stevie Wonder’s sensational…

“AUTOFICTION is half memoir and half fiction. I love the title because I think, in a sense, all art is part manipulation and part truth – every single song that’s ever written is not 100 per cent truth, and it’s not 100 per cent fiction. They all sit on a spectrum, and that whole idea really fascinates me. There’s a brilliant quote by the writer Mary McCarthy: she said that when she was writing novels, it was like she was putting real plums in imaginary cakes. It sums it up absolutely brilliantly, because that’s exactly what you’re doing. And it’s Ballardian too? The fact that it’s like a car, yeah, that had occurred to me. That was a sort of secondary thing.”…

THE typical approach for reissues is to look at original records and say, ‘OK, there’s stuff we can add for expanded versions, remastered with additional “THE material.’ But even before I knew Joni, I felt somehow she doesn’t want to alter her records and add things. The cliché is putting a moustache on the Mona Lisa. I thought, ‘What if we do something that included that material but wasn’t adding it to the records?’ I pitched the idea to her manager, Elliot Roberts, and he liked it. So, we’ve been doing this project by doing a box of the original albums followed by a box of the archive material that goes with that era. “Elliot got Joni on board, but unfortunately, he passed [in June 2019] before we got too far…

ANYONE going to see Richard Dawson in concert will probably expect a certain degree of quiet reverence. He tends to play sit-down venues and his accompaniment is usually acoustic and spartan, leaving plenty of sonic space to enhance his wonderfully bathetic, absurdist poetry – lyrics about dead dogs in alleyways, about peasants in fifth-century Northumbria, about furious dads watching their sons play football, about a man losing fingers to a Staffordshire bull terrier because he had a stick of Pepperami in his rucksack. His last gig in London was a socially distanced show at the Barbican in late 2020, where he performed solo and often a cappella. So this is quite a change in gear for Dawson. Tonight the fingerpicking introvert has transformed himself into an extrovert rock monster, playing…

HOW TO ENTER The letters in the shaded squares form an anagram of a song by Joni Mitchell. When you’ve worked out what it is, email your answer to: competitions@uncut.co.uk. The first correct entry picked at random will win a prize. Closing date: Wednesday, September 14, 2022. This competition is only open to European residents. CLUES ACROSS 1+6A That relationship between Barât and Doherty? This time it’s personal (4-5-2-3) 9 Franz Ferdinand performance in the afternoon (7) 10 “Nothing he’s got he really needs, 21st _______ schizoid man”, King Crimson (7) 11 Johnny ____, godfather of rhythm’n’blues or his son Shuggie ____ (4) 12+15A Did Booker T & The MG’s wind the clock up too much? (4-2-5) 13 Unorthodox start to a single by Muse (3) 15 (See 12 across)…

“When we introduced a computer in the studio, we didn’t play any more” FOR a musician synonymous with the interface between music and technology, Karl Bartos’s Hamburg home studio is surprisingly spartan. “I have a piano, a Martin D-28 guitar and a computer,” he reveals. “The core of my old equipment like the MiniMoog and the Arp synthesiser is still there, but they seem to retire now. Usually I go out and record something in the streets.” Rather than creating his own sounds, Bartos is currently concerned with paying deeper attention to those that already exist around us. “Ambience is really great. I’ve learned a lot from John Cage about that – he said, the great symphony is if you go to a crossroads and listen to the rhythm of…

The Bible CITY SLANG 9/10 Kurt Wagner bounces back from self-doubt with help from a community of collaborators. By Daniel Dylan Wray DESPITE being in the midst of one of the most prolific periods of his career – releasing four albums and one EP between 2016 and 2021 – Kurt Wagner was questioning things. “What the fuck am I doing?” he asked himself last year, momentarily trapped in a period of despair, before getting back to work and making another album. The resulting record is one steeped in reflection. With the backdrop of Wagner acting as primary caregiver for his father, along with his own uneasiness around life and ageing, mortality naturally seeped into his consciousness and an album exploring the essence of life, self and spirituality – in a…

Songs Of Innocence And Experience, 1965–1995 UMC 8/10 The Blakean years of an English rose, reconsidered. By Alastair Mckay THROUGHOUT her storied life, Marianne Faithfull has been in a tussle with her reputation. Sometimes it looks like a dance. Often, it is more like a fight. Though she’s now revered as an elder stateswoman and a valued collaborator – Warren Ellis is her latest pet – this compilation explores the first two acts of Faithfull’s career. In the clichéd telling of it, Faithfull was manipulated and underestimated, if not exploited, during her pop career, before clambering from the wreckage and finding her own voice. If Faithfull sounded damaged – vocally, she did – the point was underlined. She has dismissed her early recordings as “cheesecake”, though her habitual flintiness has…

VINCE GUARALDI It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown CRAFT RECORDINGS 7/10 Jazz pianist’s 1966 Peanuts soundtrack dusted off and tidily tooned up FOR millions around the world who were children between the mid-’60s and the early 1980s, Vince Guaraldi’s music for the Peanuts cartoons is deeply engrained. It was often the first jazz music they will have heard, although, at the time, Guaraldi’s upbeat, cheerful themes must have seemed an odd choice to soundtrack the grim, bleakly comic world of Charles M Schulz. Born in San Francisco in 1928, Guaraldi emerged in the ’50s accompanying the vibist Cal Tjader, later joining Woody Herman’s big band. In 1962 he belatedly jumped on the bossa nova bandwagon with Jazz Impressions Of Black Orpheus, an album of Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfa…

Ali Farka Touré AFEL BOCOUM & ALKIBAR NIGER (CONTRE-JOUR, 2006) A fellow son of Niafunké, Afel Bocoum joined Ali Farka Touré’s band in 1968 when he was just 13. With his mentor’s death from bone cancer still raw, Bocoum recorded the heartrending “Ali Farka” – one line translates as "My life’s best friend is gone" – as the opening track on his second album. SAMBA TOURÉ SONGHAI BLUES: HOMAGE TO ALI FARKA TOURÉ (RIVERBOAT RECORDS, 2009) Although no relation, Samba Touré was another Malian musician to receive the patronage of Ali Farka Touré; his mother sang with Ali’s band and Samba learned to play guitar on one of his cast-offs. This upbeat international debut followed very much in the footsteps of the desert blues trailblazer. VIEUX FARKA TOURÉ LES RACINES…

THE Small Faces catalogue hasn’t always been best served. But last year saw Kenney Jones reactivate his Nice Records label, with the intention of lovingly reissuing all of their work, in time to beat European copyright law’s looming 50-year limit. “I revived Nice Records to protect the catalogue,” Jones says. “I intend to release as much of it as I can in the best way I can. With all this EU ‘use it or lose it’ stuff, I thought, ‘Fuck that shit.’” The first release will be a boxset expanding on 1969’s valedictory double album The Autumn Stone. The intention is for all the original Small Faces albums to follow. “I’d like to nick a few tracks from albums we’ve done in the past and make a completely new one up,” Jones…

UNCUT: When did you become aware of Mark E Smith? CUMMINS:You used to see a nucleus of about 30 people who went to every gig in Manchester. He was one – there was always chat and rumours about people forming bands. The big problem was finding drummers. I have a picture of their second or third gig. What did you think of him? Mark never really changed, actually. He was always quite challenging, quite acerbic and sarcastic, but he was always OK with me because he knew I went to loads of gigs. He’d tease his band members. He’d have quite lengthy conversations in letters, in fact, that he sent to Tony Friel [Fall bassist, 1977-78] where he’d say, “I’m going to see the Sex Pistols”, then describe what they…

ERIC D JOHNSON FRUIT BATS THE RUMINANT BAND [SUP POP, 2009] Johnson takes the listener on an inventive stroll through his historical influences, ranging from Laurel Canyon to black gospel belters and country-fried Southern rock. FRUIT BATS GOLD PAST LIFE [MERGE, 2019] Fruit Bats’ ninth album, the crown jewel in the catalogue, adds a bright twist of smooth-sailing adult-oriented rock to Johnson’s signature blend of folk and indie-pop. Jams ahoy. ANAÏS MITCHELL HADESTOWN [RIGHTEOUS BABE, 2010] Mitchell’s soulful solo album, featuring Justin Vernon, Ani DiFranco and more, kick-started her journey from folk singer to Broadway musical luminary. ANAÏS MITCHELL [BMG, 2022] Eight albums in, Mitchell released a self-titled work that mines her past for remarkable, entirely graceful and poetic meditations on youth, memory, ageing and love. JOSH KAUFMAN CASSANDRA JENKINS…

BLOODSPORTS WARNER BROS, 2013 A 10-track album of stately, mature rock with a Suede twist, as exemplified by the lead single “It Starts And Ends With You”. A comeback album that solidified everything that had come before, and a strong base for the band’s evolution. 7/10 NIGHT THOUGHTS WARNER MUSIC UK, 2016 From its string-drenched opener “When You Are Young” to the windswept, dramatic “The Fur & The Feathers” that closes the record almost 50 minutes later, this was a moody counterpart to the damaged second album of Suede’s initial run, Dog Man Star. 8/10 THE BLUE HOUR WARNER MUSIC UK, 2018 The group’s most experimental effort, enlisting field recordings, interludes and the City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra to weave its conceptual, rural spell. It might be the hardcore fan’s…

FOR THE ROSES (ASYLUM, 1972) A transitional record, perhaps, but a fine one. The intricate piano ballads (“Banquet”, “See You Sometime”, “Lesson In Survival”) throw back to Blue, but elsewhere Mitchell reaches for new horizons. “You Turn Me On I’m A Radio”, with its breezy harmonica, lush vocal harmonies, easygoing acoustic groove and quick fade, illustrates how readily she could craft a pop hit to order. 8/10 COURT AND SPARK (ASYLUM, 1974) Featuring big hit “Help Me” and her winking tribute to David Geffen, “Free Man In Paris”, her first collaboration with LA Express is lush, rhythmic and panoramic; the songs uniformly fantastic, the arrangements ravishing. The intensity of old remains, but now both words and music are imbued with dazzling range and colour. 9/10 MILES OF AISLES (ASYLUM, 1974)…

TOM WAITS and his disciple Chuck E Weiss were in their favourite Los Angeles coffee shop, Duke’s, one night in May 1977, when the police came in to hustle one of the regulars. Incensed, the duo made an ill-fated decision to intervene. As Waits’ manager Herb Cohen recalled: “[The cops] pulled their guns, threw Tom and Chuck to the ground and handcuffed them. They told Chuck they were arresting them for homosexual soliciting and being drunk and disorderly.” If there was a point when Waits’ musical love affair with the seamier side of Los Angeles finally went cold, that might have been it. Alex Harvey’s Song Noir: Tom Waits And The Spirit Of Los Angeles tracks Waits’ adventures in bohemia from his 1973 debut Closing Time to 1983’s Beefheart frenzy…

RUSTY NEVER SLEEPS Greetings from Austin, Texas. Thank you so much for the two-page feature on our Resurrection Of Rust CD [Instant Karma, August issue]. After 50 years of trying, I signed my first record contract last year and now a two-page feature in Uncut! Where will it end, I wonder? I knew all I had to do was be patient and it would all eventually happen for me. Uncut is not readily available on the magazine stands in Texas, so a friend sent me a copy, and what an edition it is! In the late ’60s I was in the Traffic fanclub, Family were my favourite UK band and Buffalo Springfield my favourite US band. I also had a great fondness for Peter Green and Chicken Shack during the…

DAVID ESSEX Rock On CBS, 1973 I grew up in a household of three generations who all loved music, which was an absolute gift. But they all had their own tastes, they all had their own record collection, and we only had one record player – so music was always a bit of a fight! When I was given Rock On for my birthday, I was thrilled. The title track completely blows my mind, it’s just the most extraordinary song. And the production is amazing – I think it’s Jeff Wayne. Even at that early point in my life, there was something about the production of the record that really spoke to me. I always like music that makes me feel overwhelmed and this was the start of that feeling.…